Eight workers were apprehended in a Canada Border Services Agency raid at an east Vancouver construction site last week. The raid is raising many questions, including who is ultimately responsible for hiring illegal workers.

Under Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, employers who knowingly hire workers without proper documentation can face fines of up to $50,000 and two years in jail.

“The problem is employer sanctions are rarely applied,” said Zool Suleman, an immigration lawyer with more than 20 years’ experience.

“There’s a huge inequity in how this works.”

Unless employers have been found to routinely hire illegal workers on a wide scale or engage in other egregious conduct — such as human trafficking — they are often not pursued by Canada Border Services or Immigration Canada, Suleman said.

“The party that’s more vulnerable of course is the worker, because the worker is easily removable, easily charged under the Immigration Act.”

Suleman’s comments come the week after Canada Border Services agents conducted a raid at an east Vancouver construction site apprehending eight workers. At least one of the men arrested in the raid was in the country illegally and has signed a deportation order. The bust, which was filmed by a reality TV crew, has raised many questions, among them who is ultimately responsible for hiring illegal workers.

Site developer Cressey said the workers were hired through a subcontractor, BSSM Construction.

Reached Monday, BSSM president Serhat Seyhoglu said he was not available for an interview, but told The Vancouver Sun the workers were provided through another subcontractor.

That kind of scenario is typical for the construction sector, making it very difficult for companies to keep track of worker documentation and can lead to honest mistakes, said Catherine Sas, a partner in the immigration group at law firm Miller Thomson.

“The construction industry is one of those industries that tends to be ripe for this type of thing, you’ve got contractors and subcontractors and all these kinds of divisions. Clerical work or documentation is not their strong suit,” she said.

There are many cases where employers hire a worker with a valid work permit but forget to check down the road to ensure that it hasn’t expired, she said. Small companies lacking a dedicated human resources department face a particular challenge ensuring employees are entitled to work in Canada.

But enforcement should be more evenly meted out between employers and workers, she said, noting in her 20-year career she has defended only one company facing charges under the Immigration Act.

“It’s not just about picking up the workers that are working illegally,” she said. “Employers have to do the right thing and make sure that they’re not employing workers that don’t have work permits. And then if they are, they have to be taken to task. It’s not fair to only punish one part of the equation.”

Sas said the federal government two years ago announced steps to crack down on rogue employers by creating a “blacklist” of employers found not to have gone through the proper channels to hire foreign workers.

The list, which was launched on April 1, 2011, was touted in news reports as a tough tool intended to publicize problem employers who would also be banned from hiring foreign workers for two years. As of Monday, nearly two years after its launch, there are no company names listed on the document available on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website.

Canada Border Services Agency spokeswoman Maria Ivancic said in an email Monday the agency could not comment on the investigation of any employer involved in last week’s raid. But she did say the CBSA was committed to enforcing Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and “companies who employ foreign nationals without authorization, may be prosecuted.”

WorkSafeBC spokeswoman Ali Skinner Reynolds said anyone who meets the definition of a worker, legal or otherwise, in the province of B.C. is eligible for coverage under the Workers’ Compensation Act. She said WorkSafeBC has paid out claims to many temporary foreign workers and mails cheques to locations all over the world.

WorkSafeBC is not required to notify other levels of government to the presence of illegal workers who make claims in the majority of cases, she said. She added she did not know how many claims WorkSafeBC received from illegal migrant workers, acknowledging many likely do not know they are eligible to make claims.

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